Scott Gaffney, previous longtime Matchstick Productions director, the G in G.N.A.R., and potentially the hardest-ripping-skier-over-50, made a statement that caused many Tahoe skiers to do a double take.
Gaffney said, "Wow. This week has been one of the sickest runs of skiing for me personally that I can remember."
The above are the highlights "capping it all off (stay for the Palisades avy crown). The cup is full."
Gaffney's claim can most likely be attributed to the abundance of powder days and the storm cycles that put down 32 inches on the upper mountain over the last week.
Although the snow was heavy due to the temperatures during the days of the storm, the results were surprisingly creamy and, dare I say dreamy, on the mountain.
Plus, though normally storms are a bit of a disaster for the upper mountain, this time around, ropes were dropped relatively quickly after the fresh snowfall, allowing for hikes to exciting terrain such as Granite Peak.
There were at least 20 hikers on that trail as soon as that rope was dropped, so how Gaffney got the first tracks he got, as shown in his edit, around a holiday weekend and close to the Palisades Tahoe Cup with extra visitors, is a bit of a mystery.
Gaffney reports a minimum of five excellent days. His scale isn't quite using Radness, instead using "phenomenal" and "really good" to describe his sessions.
"I’m claiming four 'phenomenal' days and one 'really good.' And I sat for one that was probably another 'really good.'"
Really good, phenomenal... I can think of a few other words to describe this run of skiing. Without the history Scott Gaffney has at Tahoe and seeing excellent skiing all over, I can't quite set the bar so high for how great this week was.
But trust me, no matter who you are, it was great.
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